


Endings and After

by picklebridge



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23839726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picklebridge/pseuds/picklebridge
Summary: She drives her sword into the Archdemon’s head, thinking of nothing at all. The malevolent eye of the old god fixes on her, and presses down. Tries to excavate her from her own bones.For a moment, Thyrith Cousland unravels.And then the world explodes.
Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Female Cousland & Morrigan (Dragon Age), Morrigan & Female Warden (Dragon Age)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 52





	Endings and After

She drives her sword into the Archdemon’s head, thinking of nothing at all. It is easier that way, to have left all her worldly hopes behind her. She is nothing more than her blade; is steel and blood, a means to an end. She is not just a woman, fear curdling in her belly. She is more; she is less. The weapon of the people, and their last defence.  
  
Her limbs burn as the dragon writhes and arches, and the air is so hot her lungs feel like a furnace. Thyrith Cousland clings to her pommel as a shaft of light blasts up from the dragon’s head, impaling her sternum. It is like a caught breath; it is like a battering ram. It is fire and ice, an unmaking. She senses herself scream but cannot feel her vocal chords; she is one raw nerve and she is _singing_ , is being burnt away. For a moment the archdemon is within her, and that is when she truly knows pain.

It feels like her skull is being blown outwards under the enormity of the presence forcing itself inside. A hundred languages she doesn’t know thunder through her veins in terrible harmony. For a moment she is in flight, knows how it feels to breathe flame from her stomach, to have wings. The malevolent eye of the old god fixes on her, and presses down. Tries to excavate her from her own bones.  
  
For a moment, Thyrith Cousland unravels.  
  
And then, at the very edge of their ending, as they dangle over the precipice of death together, the Archdemon finds the Blight inside her. They both listen to its distant song, the tendrils of rot that thread through her to the core. She senses it follow those tendrils deeper, into the Fade. Feels its interest latch on something close, but distant; a murmuring presence, so new as to barely exist.  
  
The gaze lifts.  
  
And then the world explodes.

-  
  
She wakes to a cool, shaking hand on her throat, pressing sharply, searching.  
  
It finds what it is looking for because it stills, and then there is a sigh. The hand slackens, just resting for a moment.  
  
Thyrith hears a mutter. Clumsy warmth rushes through her, looping around ribs that burn, around her throbbing belly – a healing spell that is very familiar. Morrigan has never been very adept at healing magic, had left prickles and scratches on all of them with her barbed tongue when Wynne had tried to teach her. Thyrith has never been sure if it had been the difficulty of the spells themselves that was the problem, or the indignity of a Circle mage knowing something that Morrigan hadn’t been able to teach herself. She’d nearly scorched Alistair’s eyebrows off when he couldn’t resist making a comment, and Thyrith had laughed herself sick. But her spells do in a pinch, and the marginal relief that settles into her raw body is very welcome.  
  
The hand withdraws, and Thyrith shoots out one of her own to catch the connecting wrist, body two steps ahead of her brain. Morrigan must not be allowed to leave in silence. Not after all of this.  
  
“So you _do_ care,” Thyrith croaks, cracking open her eyes to grin at the witch above her. Wooziness drags at every inch of her, and the world blurs sickeningly. She pushes it away with effort, tries to focus on her companion. She knows Morrigan, knows she won’t get another chance to have this conversation now that her mind is made up.  
  
Morrigan’s face is frozen, but after a second, she loosens, her mouth twitching up in a smirk. Her eyes remain wary.  
  
“Do not be foolish. I was ensuring that the ritual had succeeded.”  
  
“Ah, of course. And the healing spell was just to be thorough, yes?”  
  
“Precisely so. It would be a waste of my efforts if you were to die.”  
  
There is a moment where they regard each other, snide comments patching over the inevitable. Thyrith sighs.  
  
“I’m not going to stop you, Morrigan.”  
  
The witch hesitates, but as Thyrith watches, her mouth softens into a genuine smile. Morrigan always pretends, but she never was any good at hiding her true feelings.  
  
“I did not wish to doubt, but – ”  
  
“I understand.” Thyrith pauses. “Must you truly leave?”  
  
“Ridiculous questions deserve no answer, Warden.”  
  
Thyrith snorts a small laugh, drinking in the sight of her friend and savouring the bite of her sharp words. Morrigan has been here since the beginning. Has, along with Alistair, helped her stumble through this. An acerbic voice, often disapproving, but one of reason, and of intent. She has been someone to strike against and temper her thoughts into action.  
  
Thyrith knows she couldn’t have done this without her. Her heart aches at the loss.  
  
“I had to ask. I... I know it is futile, but I’ll always be listening for your word.” She says, softly, squeezing the witch’s slender hand in her sword-roughed one.  
  
“And I shall always wish I could speak it.” Morrigan returns.  
  
Thyrith pushes the advantage, pressing the hand tighter. Has to make sure she knows. “If you _ever_ need assistance, I swear it will be given.”  
  
“There is no debt –”  
  
“Not debt. Friendship.”  
  
Morrigan’s sharp tongue searches for a barb; fails. She looks down to hide the pleased smile on her face and shakes her head, gathering her staff in her lap. She gets to her feet and scowls down at Thyrith without malice.   
  
“Curse you. I never imagined this parting would be difficult.”  
  
It is amazing that such a sentence warms Thyrith inside out.  
  
“I think that’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever granted me.” Thyrith smiles, wincing at the way her stiff body repels even that.  
  
There is another moment where they regard each other, softer, stolen. Teetering on the precipice of the end. Then somewhere across the tower there is a low groan as someone stirs, and Morrigan stiffens. Thyrith knows not to push any further. Knows that it speaks to the strength of Morrigan’s affection that she has stayed even this long.  
  
“Go,” She whispers. “I’ll make sure it’s a while before you are missed.”  
  
Morrigan nods, swallows, then hardens her expression and leaves like a wraith. As silently as she appeared in the wilds, all those months ago, she vanishes. Thyrith watches her go, unease in her belly at the thought of the old god quickening in Morrigan’s own, but holds her tongue. Morrigan’s ideas of good and ill may not match her own, but they have never been bent towards senseless harm. There is kindness at the core of Morrigan’s facaded heart. She will have to trust in that.  
  
As the world stirs around her, Thyrith feels the exhaustion pool over her like tar, and lets it drown her. She needs to rest.  
  
Just for a moment.  
  
–   
  
The next hand to touch her is not cool or measured. It shakes her until her teeth clack together and she groans as consciousness scrambles within her for purchase. Her body is a foreign place, lurching and aching and made of sharp, grating angles.  
  
The hands freeze.  
  
“Please, Andraste, _please_ ,” a raw voice begs, and the rough hands move across her face to cup her cheek, sweeping across the curve of her eyebrow.  
  
When she doesn’t speak the hands shake her again and she ekes out a wordless protest.  
  
“Thyrith?” The voice asks. Thumbs on her cheeks again, stroking rhythmically. “Please look at me.”  
  
She is still lost within herself, not even sure _what_ she is, let alone who. She keeps tripping over fragments of the Archdemon’s thoughts, left behind in its exorcism, and each one makes pain shoot through her from toes to crown.  
  
The voice curses and there’s a choked sob. Thyrith likes the voice, feels her heart clench at the unhappy sound.  
  
“Where is that Blighted healer?” The voice bellows, hands shaking against her face now. The person leans in and brushes their lips against her forehead, and the smell of them washes over her. Battle and gore – tempered metal. Leather. Something warm and full, like sunlight.  
  
 _Alistair_.  
  
“Please, Thyrith. _Please_.”  
  
How is a girl supposed to resist that? Darkspawn taint aside, she is only human. Thyrith struggles inside herself for a long moment, trying to remember how to slot thoughts into limbs. She feels the moment her brain remembers how to function within the mortal coil, as she re-joins with muscle and bone.  
  
She peels her eyes open and there is an intake of breath. The night sky swims; black choking clouds of smoke swarm across the stars, blooming like ink in a pool. She thinks about breathing, grateful to be able to taste the foul ash on her tongue. The warm body she can sense at her side leans forward and suddenly the stars blot out entirely as a pale face hovers above her. His lip is split and he is covered in blood, but Alistair is still the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. Her lips curve into a grin.  
  
“Thank the Maker,” Alistair breathes, slumping. He presses his sweaty face into the juncture of her shoulder, heedless of the sharp lines of her armour or the filth caked in her hair. He is heavy and solid and she is so grateful for it, for the fact that she is able to hold him in her arms again.  
  
“Thank Morrigan,” she whispers, forcing her burning arms up to wrap around him, to clutch the thick hair at the nape of his neck. Alive. They are alive. His breath is hot on her skin, his mouth wet as he presses it to the delicate place behind her ear. She shouldn’t feel such joy at the sight of a corpse, but the sundered body of the Archdemon, visible over Alistair’s shoulder, makes her feel like she has swallowed the sun.  
  
She never let herself think of this moment, let alone dream it. For the first time since she escaped the ruin of Highever she is alone within herself, not sharing her body with duty or vengeance. The man in her arms is the one thing she has taken for herself during the blight, and now she can be selfishly, unapologetically his. The spectre of her purpose, the duty he pressed into her hands in the shadow of Ostagar, no longer sits heavy between them. There is only Alistair, the solid press of his body a firm anchor.  
  
Thyrith feels him huff with laughter, then he shakes, and there is wetness beneath her jaw. His breath hitches and she can feel his lips move, forming graceless, desperate words against her neck as his tears fall.  
  
“What are you doing?” She murmurs. Around them she can hear others moving slowly in the aftermath of the shockwave, whimpering, groaning, and knows that her other companions will find them soon.  
  
“Thanking – anyone who will listen.” He admits, shaky. “When we saw the light go through you, I – I couldn’t _breathe_ – the way you _screamed_ –”  
  
Thyrith tightens her hand in his hair, feels something nameless and brutal well up in her, feels her own eyes sting.  
  
“It was like being ripped to pieces,” she says, and in the privacy of her own head admits that that feeling is still present inside her. Her brain feels loose, her thoughts scattered and delicate, like if she pulls too hard, she still might unravel. “I thought I might…”

Alistair’s hand finds hers, squeezes hard. She links their fingers together and feels his larger palm mirror her own. It’s a good thing she has never cared about having delicate hands. Their callouses match from the hundreds of hours they have spent hefting sword and shield, fighting back to back. She knows every inch of him, down to the way that he breathes.

And even here, right at the end of all things, he has been there to catch her.

She never let herself imagine this. The broken shell of Denerim is a shock simply because she never thought that she would live to see it. Maybe, if she had been less of a coward, she wouldn’t have. And perhaps she _shouldn’t_ have – here, or forty years in the future, what does it matter when she dies? The Darkspawn will still be waiting for her at the end.

And yet.

And yet.

Thyrith tips her head back and stares. Tears well up and slide down her face. It is the first time she has cried since she rode away from Highever, and did not look back as it burned.

The smoke hasn’t cleared, but beyond it, she can just make out the bright light of the stars. Tomorrow there will be sunshine, and there will still be people left to scrape away the ashes. There is a future waiting for her out there; there is a future in her arms. And there is nothing now, stopping her from taking it.

  
  



End file.
